Heiwa
by Kaitsurinu
Summary: The fall of the Queen. September 1st, AC 197, 7:15 P.M. to 1:30 A.M., as experienced by Duo Maxwell. [Language, Death, Angst] [Experimental] [HeeroDuo, TrowaQuatre]
1. Utopia Burning

Heiwa

Duo could never and would never forget the single most horrified expression ever to cross Heero Yuy's face when 'the shot heard around the world' went off approximately ten feet behind him.

The words fell off his lips before he had even spoken them to Duo, his eyes that had once rested comfortably on his comrade's face now filling with white. And just to make the tragedy all the more tragic, time gathered around them with the consistency of molasses, drawing each historic second out to its utmost for reasons unfathomable and cruel. Some preciously lighthearted comment was forever casualty as Duo beheld his face whiten and grow lifeless, animated only by the unequivocal fear in his eyes.

It surged up in him like fire, an unpredicted storm, a slap in the face, and his horribly expressive eyes barely took the time to blink before he lunged into motion. He turned and pitched into the slow churn of time as fast as he could. Infected by this unnamed and catastrophic dread, Duo felt his nerves fill with ice and his body magnetically trail Heero's, bristling with energy of the worst kind. He knew vaguely that his comrades were doing the same, scattered about the room, shoving bodies out of the way, propelled by blinding anxiety, but none as forcefully or as desperately as Heero.

Relena had begun screaming following the first shot and the horrific lull of the passage time and simultaneous outburst of movement, but the sound disappeared with the second.

Part 1

Utopia Burning

The gunman died instantly. Heero's body had just been traveling at such a force that when his fist came flying at his jaw that it simply twisted his head around on his neck and snapped his spinal cord with no more effort than he would snap a twig. With blood gushing between his lips and all the teeth on the offending side rendered to pieces, his lifeless and crooked body collided with the refreshment bar, ripping the antique lace tablecloth, sending wine soaring majestically into the air in a bloody and beautifully curved dance.

Here was where time intervened and returned in all its unconstrained glory, violently flinging the assassin's body against the wall, where it crumpled like a discarded doll.

Where Relena's scream had ended, the collective eruption of sound began as the crowd reacted vocally to the unbelievable happening. Duo heard the screams ripple through the hordes of people as he shoved his desperate way through, nearly knocking over the same people he had just mingled with fifteen minutes ago, with his own scream of "Preventer! Outta the way, god damn it—_Preventer_!" trying to claw its way above the din. The irony of that useless name would have been too much to think about—as the bodies finally parted and he came to a stop, his nice shirt rumpled, tail out, tie loose.

He distinctly felt his heart at the top of his throat and the foundation of the world spinning out beneath him. Duo felt his entire body try and buckle out beneath him, filled with cowardice at the sight before him. His hand groped backwards before he started to fall dizzily and used the shoulder of a near-by partygoer to propel him forward. "Shit," was all that seemed appropriate for a moment, watching Relena lying and bleeding on the conference room carpet and stumbling toward her.

Heero, a blur of fury and green tank top while in full attack mode, was stricken at Relena's side for that moment, kneeling in a splatter of her blood.

"Out of the way!" Wufei came rushing out from the bathroom an instant after the second shot, wiping his soapy hands on his khakis. If there was much room for expression of shock and outrage on his face, it was being expanded as he approached, each furious wrinkle growing more and more severe.

The Chinese pilot pushed through the gathering flock to crouch down near the crumpled Vice Foreign Minister, opposite Heero, breathless and scowling. Duo had never seen him short of breath for anything, not even Preventers physical exams. He looked just as lost as what to do as Heero for a second, not able to wrap his mind around the horrible reality of that pale, honey-haired girl bleeding on the floral print carpet, for one stunned breath. But he recovered quickly.

"Duo!" he snapped, whipping his head around. "Call the hospital and get Sally! She's at the hotel just down the block! Duo!"

At the same time, Trowa's tall form was blurring through the outer rim of horrified spectators, flanked by none other than the head of the Winner Corporation, both jaws dropped in an absurdly comical way and Quatre's warm face now deathly afraid and also flickering. Both their faces were blurring—no, they weren't moving that fast, Duo's vision was failing him, his sense of inner balance scampering to and fro with him as fear filled him like he had not felt for a long while, fucking with him. He staggered back, just looking at Relena, bleeding, a bullet in her side and another gushing at the crook of her neck.

Wufei's voice rose again. "Duo, get moving, damn it!" He was jostled to the side and his harsh command interrupted when Quatre hastily leaned his ear over the Vice Foreign Minister's slack mouth. He faintly heard Trowa barking at someone for a phone to call the medics. Security guards were filling through the doors on every side of the room.

Heero's face moved upward, almost without life, only mechanical urge, and he looked at Duo with the most helpless expression. The blood on the carpet had soaked up into the knees of his blue jeans and he had his hand over the wound in her side with the blood pumping over his long, bony fingers, and he knew exactly what to do—but he hadn't moved an inch. He looked up at Duo, and it was enough to send his sneakers flying across the carpet faster than he could have imagined, sending him lunging through the crowd for the emergency stairwell.

The silent, agape crowd parted like the Red Sea to let him pass, moving on instinct. The door latch buckled loudly as he shoved it open and thundered down the stairwell. He leapt the first flight of seven steps, stumbled on the landing, but moved madly on, his long tail of hair whipping loudly in the silent, stale air. Only a few briefs minutes later, the blur that was Duo Maxwell running for the life of peace, bleeding in a conference room, sprinted through the middle of the hotel lobby just next door but seemingly an eternity away, while the people there quaintly read their newspapers, not knowing that revolution was licking its chops just at each and every one of their doorsteps.


	2. Blue Ribbon Fading Hysterically

Part 2

Blue Ribbon Fading Hysterically

"Oh. Just charming," Duo slurred, squinting at the transparency projected on the wall. "This guy got a name to go with that Picasso of a face?" Not surprisingly, there was no laughter at this comment.

Lady Une, ramrod straight, her hair tucked back in a ponytail, brown eyes objective and passionless for the moment, had adopted some of her Colonel tendency from the long, difficult years past. She spoke in clipped, unemotional words, her syntax of that of a completely controlled woman.

"Martin Lewis Raul. He left his identification card in his breast pocket, waiting for us to find it. Dropped out in high school, worked for twenty-nine years in the family business, a somewhat credible space colony citizen's newspaper," she informed the darkened room, giving credit to the dead man who had just negated all the work of their lifetime just by being casually introduced to the most recognizable woman in the world.

"A nobody," Wufei growled.

"Is there any idea of why he was here?" Quatre's eyes, scanning Une's face, reading it intently. His mouth pursed, thin, worried.

"Who's going to see to it that the officer in charge of security is interrogated?" Trowa piped up levelly. "He needed clearance to even get within a hundred feet of the building. An accomplice is imperative to operations of that scale."

"Interrogations of our suspects are already in progress. They will be extensively thorough, I assure you."

"Leave no teeth unbroken," Duo muttered darkly, sinking back into his chair.

"The media will panic," Wufei warned. "We need a definitive explanation of what happened before we even think about stepping outside of this building. If we do not exceed their expectations, they will tear every attempt at restraint apart, looking for it. They need to be able to point blame, even if they are wrong. The public cannot be allowed to be swayed by even the slightest negative force at a time like this; they are vulnerable, they are prey. They will go looking for reassurance and power. It will mean war if it is the wrong power."

"Fuck, it's just going to be war no matter what it is. We're walking on bombshells with fucking cement boots."

"We may have a motive," Une interrupted passionlessly, some how not please with Duo's blunt assertion. "Though it means little now."

Quatre's face had not moved, concealed by the heavy shadows in the room. He watched her carefully, his eyes stilled on her face but his mind inevitably moving at the speed of light. There was a reason he had been able to master Zero system at such a young age and that ability did not dim with time. He waited silently, and Trowa at his side, fingers quietly entwined under the table between them, turned his head to look at her as well.

Wufei's chair moved minimally so he could level a stony stare at her. "Recognition," he guessed grimly.

Une didn't need to nod. The equal grimness in her entire posture agreed with him. "A year and three months ago he was diagnosed by the LaGrange Mercy Hospital with a malignant tumor the size of a baseball swelling up beneath his ear. Remission came after a surgery and four months of intense chemotherapy. He relapsed, discovered this sometime Tuesday morning, and came to murder Relena Darlian Thursday night."

Thus far the only signal of emotion peering through her strictly schooled face was the sigh punctuating her sentence occasionally. But otherwise than that, she rivaled stone. "No radical political allegiances, no personal dispute, no external motivation, no need for money, no need for revenge. He lead an average life, felt anger at it being cut short, and decided he would make something of it."

Une's words fell heavily in the room, sinking agonizingly slow through the palpable tension filling the space between the walls. The darkness seemed to take a seat beside each of them, weighing them down so their chests ached. Horrible thoughts ran rampant, but it was Duo who announced the dreadful truth poisoning their hearts with a distant, aloof sneer of his lips.

"So she really did die for nothing."


	3. Crown of Love

Part 3

Crown of Love

Duo Maxwell walked to his apartment and scaled the stairs of wrought iron in the dead of night only a few hours after the assassination of the queen. Not even the stone walls dared to breathe, in anticipation of the world's reaction that coming morning. The streetlights dimmed, the stars hid themselves, weeping, and the elevator malfunctioned, sending one tired soldier up the stairs. Not that he really knew it. He saw instead, vivid and bloody red in his mind, Alexander being thrown from Bucephalus in the heat of battle, Joan of Arc pierced by merciless British arrow, American soldiers dying a smoldering death in the dense shadow of the Ardennes, Germans striding over their smoking carcasses to victory. The gentle dove of peace had been brutally murdered and reduced to memory, and Duo found himself again standing at war's gruesome doorstep, cheated by God. He'd been there before, and he'd earned the right to never open it again, but he also realized time cared little for what mankind deserved and God had turned the other cheek before.

He turned the key in the lock and it opened. Duo did not care to glance behind him before sealing himself into his apartment—what good was an old soldier's habit on this day, when nothing could accompany the sun tomorrow but war and its senseless repetition? A shadow within his darkened home, he stepped inside, uncharacteristically silent.

The lights remained down and a square of timid white moonlight rested just below the window, the color of a skeleton on the floorboards. He stopped after closing the door behind him, still beleaguered by images of warriors falling in battle, heroes who would have brought peace and lasting welfare but now collapsed in bleeding, heaving corpses on the ground in his mind.

The world had become a coffin, and like trapped air, time was winding down ever so painfully around him, eroding. How long could even this fragile peace last without a shield, without its delicate upholder, from the fangs of those who had never seen battle and were foolish enough to seek it? And what would happen then? The soldiers were still weary from the last war, for fuck's sake! Some were just getting out of the hospital or being put in the ground now, only a few months after the Christmas Day coup d'état. Peace had been green again, and growing.

And one motherfucking shit wallowing in self-pity had obliterated that on one asinine whim—threw away thousands of lives because he couldn't face up to his maker just yet. In one idiotic move, he had rendered the deaths of every loved one in the war totally worthless. Debased all of Duo's memories, negated Father Maxwell and Sister Helen's sacrifice. He was so selfish it made him sick.

Duo sighed sharply and hurled his keys off into the darkness, not caring where they landed. Not like he could stay here for much longer now, anyway. The entire coffin seemed to flinch at this sudden, violent motion.

"Fuck it," he breathed, still standing motionless at the door. "What is anything fucking worth?" He whirled, swearing passionately, and kicked the wall so hard his toes throbbed afterward.

But Duo's mind was distant, consumed instead by the feeling of death hanging overhead. The air was apocalyptic and stale and he knew that the sun would soon rise and bring what they all feared. The unpredicatable morn. He stood there for an immeasurable amount of time. He was lost in his own mind while it tried to make sense of the senselessness of the world, all before sunrise. It was then, as reality slowly dragged him back, that he realized he was staring at a pair of very familiar looking sneakers, politely lined up next to the doormat.

He did not move for another moment, then lifted his head, staring into the darkened shadows and somehow _knowing_ where this polite intruder would be. He was led by his disheartened intuition sitting in the pit of his stomach to his bedroom doorway. The coffin was silent, more silent than Duo had ever heard in his life, and he stepped like it would be his last.

The door was open, letting the shadows flow uninhibited from room to room. And wrapped up in this unending ribbon of black, broken only by skeletal white and the faintest blue grace from the moonlight, sat one of those soldiers who hovered somewhere between the battlefield and the grave, meditating on the end of Duo's bed. He remained there, eyes averted to the floorboards as if he had been waiting for Duo for a long, long time, tired and distant. Maybe even since the Queen had died.

Duo called Heero's name on instinct so tiredly he barely breathed, but he still lifted his head. Painted by the patterns of light and dark in Duo's room, he looked like a memory, a fading image of something that had been. That thought made a shiver creep down Duo's spine, full of dread if that was to be all their fates, and the expression in his comrade's eyes filled his body with countless more.

It took him much longer than he thought to find his voice. "What are you doing here, Heero?" he asked, and his tone was much more lifeless than he expected. "Where the hell have you been all this time? We've been fucking nuts trying to find you."

When he gave no response except for the stare of his ghostly blue eyes, hesitating as the emotion in his face changed slowly, Duo sighed and scoffed, ready to kick off his own shoes and collapse in bed and forget he himself had ever existed. "Nice of you to tell us where the _fuck_ you went the day the _fucking_ queen died, you know. Hell if you need us lowly mortals."

Heero suddenly made a movement Duo had never seen before and he paused, surprised and unsure of what he had witnessed. The Wing pilot sat on the edge of the bed so delicately he might have been nothing more an eerie hallucination, his worried mouth set tragically as he couldn't form the words to respond, and flinched at Duo's accusation, hanging his head so he could hide the miniscule movement he made. Tiny, but real. The timid creature that could not be Heero Yuy hung his head, distraught within an emotion that Heero Yuy never showed and never had.

Duo felt a mysterious pain in his chest, and in his distant daze, did not realize it was heartache.

"Heero?"

The sound of his name carried through the air heavier than stone itself, and Duo could not breathe when this mysterious creature again repeated that tiny, reluctant movement. Heero wiped a hand beneath his eye, radiating the quiet shame of what he'd done. Duo could see in that foreign movement that it was what he _hadn't _done that had brought him here in the dead of this apocalyptic night, blinding seeking something too long gone to seek.

"D-Duo," he managed out, this impossible image of Heero Yuy, before his breath hitched. "I'm sorry. I didn't know where to go."

He looked up at Duo now. His gaze was a knife that pinned his heart to the wall, throbbing in grief. "Ah, shit, man," Duo let out in a groan, realizing it was not a cruel beam of moonlight that painted the red in his comrade's eyes. Something like a disease made him gape, then stammer out an ineffectual sound that could not form a word. It fell away from him and into the tension between them. Heero watched his lips vainly grope, then quit and Duo look bewildered, pinned again to where he stood. He looked away again and his head hung a little lower.

Duo wanted so badly now to speak, but the image of those blue eyes had robbed him of his voice and now that it returned at their aversion, he was at a barbaric loss of what to say. What to say to this, a ghost of his comrade, his blood brother, and distant temptation that wept in his darkened room?

_He looked straight through me there, over Relena's dying body. Straight through me and into the tomorrow morning. He saw it, just as I can see it, and we share the same terrible pain of that knowledge. Looked straight through me like he was already dead, dying with her. Jesus Christ, why doesn't he quit staring like that? _

And so the words left his mouth as a quiet consolation. "It wasn't your fault."

Heero flinched at this, looking equally as wounded as if Duo had screamed at him, with his bottomless blue eyes turning up towards him and shining illegally. Duo had to wonder if he had heard blame in his mind, tinted by the terrible responsibility tarnished in his soul, and again watched the impossible image look away. Silence followed, the most pained and helpless sound possible at that moment.

He couldn't even answer Duo. He couldn't even see him there anymore.

_He's there now, going back to her, back to when we all thought we had cheated death for one last, glorious time, and death proved us wrong. He's a thousand miles away from here. And he may never come back. _

Duo knew then what had to be done, what Heero had come for, searching so lost. The silence could not be allowed to spread, to fester in such a horribly intelligent and perceptive mind. Heero Yuy was the possibly the strongest, brightest human being the race had ever known—but he was just that, a human, and the weight of death destroyed indiscriminately. He knew what was needed of him, and he had, really since he'd seen that tragic face, deep in the pit of his stomach, but that solution was behind a door Duo had never dared to open before. It required an intimacy and truth he could not bear before Heero, to unlock a closely barred door and render himself an equally pathetic creature, forlorn and helpless.

He could not let it go, could not admit to himself just how young he still was, just how much he wanted to _live_, when he'd spent a lifetime forced into old age and resignation to death. He could not willingly open up that vulnerable part of him and surrender to it. It would consume him. So he didn't.

"Damn it," he hissed to himself. Even when he wept, full of shame, Heero was always stronger, always frustratingly perfect. He was hardened by war, but he still somehow retained that gentler, kinder nature, untarnished. He had not lost his humanity like Duo had, knocked around by life, and shunned it for once and all. He could still cry. Duo envied it terribly.

And while he wept to himself, light years removed on the foot of his bed, Duo kicked off his shoes, letting them fall in the darkness where they would, and walked past Heero to his side the bed. The red numbers glowing there, counting the approach of the apocalyptic morn, stared up at him, punching him in the hole in his heart Heero's stare had already torn.

He threw it as hard as he could in the wall with a deafening crack, then sat down on the mattress. Not sparing a glance to the stone-like figure at the foot of the bed, he laid down, staring lifelessly into the wall, refusing to further acknowledge a goddamned thing. His shoulders did not move, his lips pinched together in a blank grimace, and hair gently resting in his eyes, his braided tail arched on the blankets beside him, alone.

A pair of loath prophets, the weeping and the silent, remained still for what was to them immeasurable amounts of time, until the weeping one lifted his heavy head and turned to look at the other.

Heero, redden eyes halfway obscured by his shock of dark hair, let out a soft hitch of breath as he opened his mouth. He spoke as if he would break his voice if he lifted it any more, and called Duo's name. In that same, wrenching way, pulling Duo's heart unwillingly towards him.

"Duo."

He only laid there in response, staring fiercer at the wall.

Heero hesitated, pursing his lips to gather strength, and did it again.

Duo was not strong enough to resist his call, but he was stubborn enough to refuse it. Instead of answering to that voice, to the man to whom he owed his life and whose life he was owed in return, he rolled onto his stomach and tried to force himself into unconsciousness or preferably an eternal sleep. The broken clock lay on the floor, its partially glowing red lights flashing in distress in the corner, and moonlight pouring in, without remorse, through the opposing window.

"Duo."

Finally, he let out a growl of a voice. "What is it?"

Now Heero's voice broke and he keened out, "_Duo._"

_Don't do this to __him__. Don't do this to _yourself.

Duo, afraid, turned to look at him and found he was not at the foot of the bed, he was climbing onto it, intercepting him as he turned over to sit up and throwing his arms around him. Heero pushed him back with the force of his arms desperately clutching his shoulders, falling together onto the mattress, putting his face into the crook of his neck, pressing it into the blankets, furthest away from the crushing weight of reality he could manage. Duo felt himself pressed fully against him, choked by shock. For a moment, he lay there. And when Heero's shoulders began to move so painfully up and down, he buried himself in return, wrapping his arms grievously around his waist and clutching at his back. Hot breath ran down his spine as Heero grimaced, crying.

"It wasn't our fault," he whispered, feeling his barred door splintering and opening. He felt it all at once now—the horrific grief of Relena's expression, the thousands of little deaths he'd suffered to be alive now, the overwhelming betrayal of peace being forcibly ripped from them—and felt his heart break again.

The hope of humanity was lying in his arms, weeping like a child, and so was he. But that was what they were. They were still just children, and the world was large and cruel.

Heero's heat touched flush against him, tangled and touching from head to toe, and Duo now realized how cold it was in his coffin of an apartment, how the prospect of the future loomed over him. The other pilot shivered, trying to bury himself within Duo, and turned his head, hiding it beneath his chin as he spoke. "But it happened," he said, voice gravelly from crying in his silent, torturous way.

Duo squeezed his arms around him and shut his eyes tightly. "Yes, it did." The words stung so bad to speak aloud, but Heero's voice was wrenching.

"We were so close. We had made it."

He nodded, and moved a hand up to the side of Heero's face, holding it closer to his neck. As if they could just fall into each other and never have to see the world outside again. "We'll still make it. Come on, we'll be fine," he said, convincing no one.

"She depended on me. And I let her die. She didn't deserve to die like that."

"You didn't _let_ her die, Heero," Duo said sharply, clutching him harder and pressing the side of his face against his forehead. "Don't fucking say that. Don't _fucking_ pull that guilt trip on anybody. She died. It happened. Shit happens."

Heero snorted, the breath running shivers up and down Duo's spine as it ran gently down the length of his neck, and smiled surprisingly against him. "Only you could say such a depressing thing and make it feel so reassuring, Duo Maxwell." And then he laughed tiredly.

Nestling closer, the two reluctant prophets lay closely together, anchoring themselves desperately to each other. Duo felt Heero's breath running rhythmically over his skin, fluttering the stray strands of hair beneath his ear and closed his eyes, simply breathing in return. Heero's shoulders still trembled now and again, but Duo would hitch his brow and squeeze his arms, pushing it away. They agreed without communication to avoid any thought of bleeding doves or impending catastrophe and lie together, and they did. It was an eternity before the silence was broken again.

"Do you really think we can hold off Time?" Heero whispered suddenly, waking him from their grieving stillness. "Tomorrow will come, no matter how much we don't want it to come. You know that, Duo."

He closed his eyes again and put his arms around Heero's neck and answered grimly, whispering just below his ear, "Yeah, I do. But we'll face the morning together." He let out a sigh that betrayed his true age. "So let's make it last."

* * *

September 2nd, AC 197 

_The World Sphere_

**VICE FOREIGN MINISTER RELENA DARLIAN SHOT DEAD**

**PEACE BROKEN?**

* * *

"The fickle finger of fate. With what motive does it choose whom it smears out of existence?" 

**Fin**

* * *

Author's Notes: If anyone was expecting a fabulous political thriller and wonderful mutlipart drama about the world after Relena's death... well, now you know better! This was an experimental fic (which is only a warning that it's subject to my twisted imagination and very little filter) and meant to be an emotional snapshot of a "what-if" situation. It focused even more on the dread of waiting on the eve of something terrible and not knowing what's coming next. There's no definite answer to what happens after her death, either. I purposely avoided descriptions of Relena's body, or writing any kind of a eulogy for her, because it's not really about the loss of her life -- it's about emphasizing Heero and Duo and the other pilots as they really are, young and afraid despite it all, so I kind of used Relena as nothing more than a stimuli for the plot. Don't get me wrong, I respect her character, so I made sure her death had a very profound and important effect, even though you don't get to see what it is, but I did sort of enjoy killing her off. :) The chapters are very disjointed to make it seem like time is blurring by without their control, and besides, short chapters that pack a punch don't take a month a piece to churn out, which is nice. ; This story has been simmering on my hard drive for a while, and I still had the mind to finish it, so I wrote it when I felt frustrated with other stories. The title is Japanese for "Peace," and the last chappy name is a song off Arcade Fire's (frickin awesome) album, _Funeral_. Hope you enjoyed it and here's some soundtrack. 

"Everybody Hurts" & "Sweetness Follows" by R.E.M.

"Give You Back" by Vertical Horizon

"Truth is a Whisper" by the Goo Goo Dolls


End file.
